Steven Stein
Supply chain management (SCM) has been defined as “the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive...
Nate Burke
How many of us remember walking into a holiday gift shop when younger (and before a global pandemic put a stop to the H word), and eagerly searching for a fridge magnet, mug, or pencil inscribed with...
Ryan E. Day
With the migration to remote and hybrid work during the last year, cyberattacks have increased at a rate of three to five times compared to pre-Covid. No big surprise that, for many...
Emily Newton
Effective equipment testing is essential for manufacturers of industrial equipment and end-users. Without testing, defects and damage can shorten the life span of equipment, cause unplanned downtime...
Terry Onica
With recent disruptions critically impacting the automotive supply chain and costing manufacturers millions in lost production and sales, it is clear that supply delivery issues now need the same...
Jason Chester
Manufacturers have seen the need to digitize operations for quite some time, but the Covid-19 pandemic has forced the issue to center stage. They’ve had to adapt to sudden, dramatic changes like more...
MIT News
First published June 29, 2021, on MIT News.
MIT and Harvard University have announced a major transition for edX, the nonprofit organization they launched in 2012 to provide an open online...
Steven Severt
When it comes to ongoing certification of your quality management system (QMS), whether it’s certified to ISO 9001, ISO 13485, IATF 16949, or AS9100, how many times have you found yourself “preparing...
Bruce Hamilton
PDCA—plan, do, check, act (or adjust)—is one of those acronymic concepts that regularly finds its way into lean discussions. Descended from Francis Bacon’s scientific method (hypothesis, experiment,...
Christopher Allan Smith
This series is about getting you through a catastrophe. The first three articles (see “All articles in this series”) were about preparing and responding to the world around you when it’s consumed by...
Matt Fieldman
This article is the fourth in a monthly series brought to you by the America Works initiative. As a part of the MEP National Network’s goal of supporting the growth of small and medium-sized...
Harish Jose
Recently, I came across an interesting insight at Toyota’s website. I was taken aback by the first sentence of this paragraph: “Eventually, the value added by the line’s human operators disappears...
Bryan Christiansen
Adherence to lean principles is considered a precondition for success in modern manufacturing. In a resource-intensive environment, anything that improves efficiency and productivity is a godsend....
Zach Winn
This story was originally published by MIT News.
Whether it’s computer chips, smartphone components, or camera parts, the hardware in many products is constantly getting smaller. The trend is pushing...
Katherine H. Freeman
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
In 2020, the annual committee meeting of the journal we edit was a bit of a mess. It took place in March, just days before the World Health...
Glenn Daehn
Failure of a machine in a factory can shut it down. Lost production can cost millions of dollars per day. Component failures can devastate factories, power plants, and battlefield equipment.
To...
Corey Brown
Getting inside the mind of an ISO 9001 auditor is crucial to a successful ISO audit. Think of it like a gift: Even the best of presents can be unappealing when wrapped in crumpled, messy...
Doug Devereaux
The premise for the NIST MEP Digital Supply-Chain Network project is familiar to MEP centers—many small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) are often not ready for Industry 4.0 and don’t know how...
Chuck Olinger
Most manufacturers want a quality management system (QMS) to meet strict quality values. They need one to expressly meet the needs of their specific organization yet be within the parameters of...
Brian C. Black
When President Joe Biden took Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup for a test drive in Dearborn, Michigan, in May 2021, the event was more than a White House photo op. It marked a new phase in an...
